Post navigation

When it comes to dessert, I am usually not a fan. I just like dinner too much, so when that’s over all I am so full all I really want is some some quiet and a glass of good bourbon on the deck… Which I guess is why I go for dessert that are easy to make. This one was super easy, but the feedback from my dinner guests was awesome, so here – you can have it too. This dessert is very little work if you prep the glaze beforehand, which is perfect, because spending your time by the grill while everyone else is chilling after dinner is never fun!

What you need for 4 people:
4-6 pears, nice and ripe, but still firm
A box of quality vanilla ice cream
0.5 cup of good bourbon (I used Maker’s Mark)
A couple cinnamon sticks
1 tsp hot chili flakes, or more, depending
0.5 cup of 100% natural maple syrup
The juice from half a lemon
3-4 tbsp of brown sugar to taste

How to make the glaze (can be made ahead):

Put everything except the pears in a saucepan

Heat it slowly and let it simmer 10-15 minutes to reduce it

Optional but tasty: Caramelize the sugar. This can be hard without a candy thermometer, so you might need one. Just make sure you don’t burn the sugar, because that’s not tasty.

Remember, this stuff will thicken when cold. Try and get a thick syrupy consistency at room temp, that will make it easier when glazing time comes

How to grill the pears:

I grilled my pears whole. That was not the best idea. What you should do and I will next time; peel the pears and cut off the stem, quarter them so you can easily slice out the core

Grill them over direct heat first to get some beautiful sear marks

Place in a grill pan over indirect, pour/brush the glaze on. Turn and scoop some glaze over them every 10 minutes. I had a dome temp of about 150-160C (300-320F)

Mine were done after about half an hour. You want them to be soft but not mushy

Serve with some quality vanilla ice cream and pour the glaze over as a sauce. Tasty!

Aubergine puréee is an easy side dish to make on the grill. It goes particularly well with lamb, but also works nicely as a side for steak or venison. Here’s how I normally do it.

Time: 60-90 minutesSkill Level: Easy

What you will need:
4 large aubergines
2 whole garlic
1/2 cup of good olive oil
1 lemon
Salt/pepper

How to do it:

Get your grill ready for indirect cooking at about 175-200C (350-400F)First, prep the aubergines by stabbing them repeteadly with a fork all over. This can be fun, imagine you’re stabbing someone you really don’t like! Or don’t. Once the grill is ready, chuck the aubergines and the whole garlic on the coldest side of the grill, and roast them for about 45-60 minutes. When the aubergines are done they will feel noticeably softer than they were. Get everything off the grill. Peel the aubergines and chop them roughly, put them in a blender. Squeeze the now soft garlic “meat” out of the whole garlic. Mix it all up in a blender, while slowly adding the olive oil. Add juice from the lemon and salt and pepper to taste. Serve!

Lamb season is fast approaching here in Norway, and bone-in leg of lamb is my favorite. I know boneless is just as good, and butterflied is much quicker, but nothing beats the visual impact of a big chunk of meat with the bone still in it for me. Maybe it’s my Nordic genes, or maybe it’s the caveman or woman in all of us wanting some satisfaction? Anyhow, I will use bone-in for this recipe, it’s just more fun that way, plus the bone-in version has to great other features: Firstly, a nice handle for turning the meat in the form of a bone, secondly a litttle chef’s snack muscle towards to thin end of the bone. So there, bone-in wins for me, every time. Note: I have to excuse the lack of a photo of the plated food in this post, but sometimes the food is so good and I am so hungry that I forget. So enjoy a ton of pics of the lamb on the grill instead…. 😀

Total time: 5-8 hours, marinating the day before if you want toSkill level: Beginner/IntermediateGrilling method:Indirect, one-zoneGrill temperature: About 110-120 degrees centigrade (230-250F), or even lowe if you can manage

You’re going to need:

A leg of lamb per four people should be about right, depending on how big they are

If you want to marinate the meat, you should start the day before. Mix up lemon, rosemary, honey, lots of crushed garlic, some mustard and a good olive oil in a blender. Add salt and pepper to taste, and some cayenne pepper if you want some heat (I always do)

If you’re lucky enough to have one of those fancy vacuum machines like I do, throw the leg in a bag with the marinade and vacuum it up, leaving it in the fridge overnight. If not, use a plastic bag, and try to cover it well in the marinade before wrapping it up and putting in the fridge.

indirect, low and slow cooking with some coals on one side, and place for the met on the other. If you want to make sauce, you’re going to need a drip pan to put under the meat to catch drippings

If you didn’t marinate the night before, go up a couple steps, make the marinade mix and get the meat slathered in that stuff before you put the meat on the grill. If you did, take the meat out of the bag, but save up the marinade leftovers for later.

Remember to get the smoke going before putting the meat on. I like to mix rosemary branches with hickory for lamb smoking.

Add some water to your drip pan. Not a lot, this is just to keep the drippings from burning, remember you will make that into a sauce later.

Add a temperature probe to the meatiest part of the leg, and add another one to the grill grate to monitor grill temperature. You don’t have a two-probe style wireless thermometer yet you say? Go and get yourself one. I have been using the Maverick ET-732 for a couple years, and it works quite well.

Keep the grill low and slow for hours, keeping an eye on meat and grill temp. Add a cup of water to the drip pan if it runs out, and add coals if you need to (I don’t anymore thanks to my lovely new Primo Oval XL)

Once the meat reaches an internal temperature of exactly 68C (155F), take it off the grill, wrap it in a double layer of aluminium foil, and wrap that in a plastic bag, then a couple towels. Ideally you want to rest the leg for at least one hour, but if you’re done well ahead of dinner, resting it for 2-3 or even 4 hours is not a problem at all.

Take out the drip pan, put the sauce in a pot, and make a delicious sauce. Adding some red wine, salt and pepper to taste and reducing until you have the desired consistency is a good idea. If the sauce is too sharp, some honey might be able to help you out.

When you are about ready to serve, fire the grill up for direct cooking at a temp of about 150-160C (300-320F), brush the leg with any marinade leftovers, and finish the leg off over direct heat. The goal here is to get a nice sear before serving, and crisping up the outside.

Let the lamb rest for 5-10 minutes again, while you grill up some fresh spring oninon and/or asparagus. Serve and enjoy!

Pickle relish is fantastic. Nothing beats a good smoked bratwurst in a homemade bun, slathered with homemade IPA mustard and some delicious relish. Now that’s a hot dog! A cool thing about this recipe, is that it’s the only way I know of to make something pickled in less than half an hour. This one is ready to eat right off the bat. That’s pretty cool. This recipe should make for about one large mason jar type container, so just double it if you need more.

Put them in a sieve and drain some of the water out squeezing them gently with your hands or some kind of spoon implement. Put all the grated vegetables in a pot with the vinegar and the honey

Bring to a boil, and add a tablespoon or two of mustard seed, a pinch of celery seed, and as much chili flakes as you want. I use chili flakes that are quite hot, so for me about a teaspoon is enough for this one

Let it simmer until desired consistency is reached

Put in sterilized jars and enjoy delicious homemade relish for months to come

Been a long time since I posted a BBQ sauce recipe, so here is another favorite. Not very spicy, but smoky and sweet. Goes great with sausage, pork ribs, chicken and pulled pork sandwiches, and a favorite at my house for the people who can’t take the heat of a lot of my other stuff.

How to do it:
This couldn’t be easier. Chuck everything except the ketchup in a saucepan, stir well and bring to a boil. Let simmer for 10 minutes. Add the ketchup, bring to boil. Taste. Add vinegar, sweetener, salt and pepper until you get your preferred flavor. Let cool, put in jars. Keeps for months in the fridge if you use sterilized jars.

Once you have mastered the art of Smoking Bratwurst – it is time to up your game a little and try your hand at another BBQ staple: Baby Back Ribs!

A lot of people’s favorite food of the smoker, BBRs are not to be taken lightly. I like to make mine tender, but not fall-off-the-bone tender. A lot of (gruesome) chain restaurants have made people think that BBRs should be cooked (I believe they steam/braise them at most of those restaurants) so they can be eaten without teeth. I tend to disagree, and go more for the BBQ competition level of doneness, ie tender, but not doughy and fall-of-the-bone. Anyway, if you want fall-of-the-bone and/or do not have teeth, I will teach you how to do that too.

Serving suggestion:
I like to serve my BBRs straight up with a coleslaw on the side and some homemade pickles. For this occasion photographed, I made my regular creamy coleslaw recipe but substitued regular cabbage with the red one for some interesting color combos. Some people like extra sweet and smoky bbq sauce on the side!

Your favorite BBQ sauce for glazing at the end if you want to. I like a sweet and smoky style sauce for ribs, not too spicy. Your favorite store bought or homemade one will do!

How you do it:

We are going to use the three step method for doing BBRs. That means step 1 is smoking the ribs, step 2 is foiling and steaming, step 3 is finishing/glazing. This method is sometimes referred to as the 3-2-1 methods, where the numbers refer to number of hours in each step. Anywho – the goal is not to achieve 3, 2 and 1, but to achieve rib perfection, so your mileage on those may vary, but as a guideline it is sound.

Prep the baby back ribs by removing the membrane from the bone side. It’s very easy to do, check out a video over here if you don’t know how.

Fire up your grill or smoker and try to stabilize the temperature in the desired range of 110-120C (230-250F). On my Webers I will use a water pan to help me out in the stabilizing, it adds both mass and moisture inside the grill. On my Primo Grill I don’t really need that, and I also like to put the meat in when the grill is warming up, so it can get the maximum amount of smoke time. Remember to get good smoke going before putting in the meat.

Smoke the meat for as long it takes for the racks to reach 80-90C (175-195F)in the meatiest parts. The longer you spend on this step, the more smokey flavors.

Once they are smoked, it is time for step 2, the foiling and steaming of the ribs. Put them in a stainless steel pan on top of a rack, or on top of some crumbled up foil so they don’t touch the bottom, add a cup of water or apple juice, and cover with two layers of foil so it’s fairly airtight. Place the pan back on the grill.

Now for steaming time, this can take anything from 45-120 minutes. The best way to find out if they are finished is to check every 15 minutes towards the end. Take the foil off, wiggle the bones, pole them a little bit. When they are close to done, the meat should loosen from the bone with not too much effort. If you want them chain restaurant style, toothless done, they should start coming apart if you try to lift from one end.

Whenever your preferred doneness is achieved, take the pan of the grill, and increase the grill temp to about 150-160C (300-320F). This is the best temperature for the third and last step – finishing the ribs.

The reason you don’t go above 160C/320F for the finishing, is that at about 175C/350F, sugar will burn. This means your BBQ sauce and possibly your rub will turn from sweet to nasty in no time.

So, once stabilized at the new higher temp, lay out the ribs again, and brush them with a layer of your favorite BBQ sauce on both sides. Leave them on the indirect side 10 minutes, add another layer and flip, and leave them for another 10 minutes. After this they should have a nice, glossy laquer to them, and they should be finished, so serve it up!

About a week ago, the Norwegian company Gastronaut gave me a good offer on a Primo Oval XL grill (this happened sort of by chance via my BBQviking Instagram account, btw!). I had been researching kamado style grills and other types of smokers for a long time already, thinking about upgrading from my two standard Weber kettles. I long considered Weber’s WSM, some insulated smokers like the Chubby from Backwoods Smoker, and other alternatives.

The more I researched and thought about it, the more a kamado style grill/smoker looked like the best alternative for me. It would allow me to get a better grill for hot and fast type cooking (especially for Norwegian winter conditions) and a smoker at the same time. Best of both worlds. The Oval shape of the Primo appealed to me, and seemed to give me the most cooking space for my buck -. Which is important, because I often cook for 8+

That one time the inside of a kamado was clean and bright. This can’t last

people. I had been eyeing the Big Green Egg too of course, but they seemed way overpriced, especially here in Norway

Last Monday, the magic happened – I could pick up my new Primo Oval XL from the dealer. It barely fit in my boxy, boring people mover, and it was heavy! Had to call a friend to help me come over and put it on a makeshift table/stand I had built for it! I opted for the model with no stand, because I have some plans for a simple outdoor kitchen/bench this spring on my deck anyway. More on that later!

I have had 4 cooks on the thing this week. A couple normal grilling sessions with direct and indirect cooking, and one long, low and slow cook last Saturday, with two big pork butts and some Norwegian beef ribs – aka “bibringe”.

So, what are the biggest differences between the Primo and my two Weber Performer grills? Let me give you a list of things I noticed using the Primo this first week:

First off – you don’t use a chimney starter on the primo. It only takes lump charcoal, no briquettes, and I have been using alcohol based tablets to fire it up. The old paper towel drenched in vegetable oil trick works well too. Never use starting fluid in a ceramic grill, says all the manufacturers.

The charcoal capacity of the thing is huge, and it seems to work best when it’s filled up – even if I’m doing a short cook. Once I’m done I just close the vents, and out the flame goes, leaving a ton of charcoal for next cook. Quite simple really.

It was very easy getting used to the vents and managing temperature – but then I have practiced A LOT on the Weber kettles doing this. Having a remote two-probe type thermometer seems almost a necessity on this type of grill. I use the Maverick ET-732.

For me so far, it takes a bit longer to get the Primo up to temp then it takes on my standard kettles. This kind of makes sense, due to the sheer mass of the Primo. 90 kg or about 200 pounds of ceramic needs to get heated up. When adding the deflector plates, that adds more weight too. Also I think the different lighting technique makes it take a while longer

Once it’s up to temp however, it stays there very nicely. Patience is important, the amount of mass introduces a delay in temperature changes, so oversteering it could become an issue if you’re not patient enough.

Smoke management is also quite different. Especially doing low and slow with the two deflector plates installed, I have no easy way of adding smoke during the cook. This means chunks spread out in the coal pile are a lot better than the chips I’m using on my standard kettles. If you’re grilling without deflector plates, direct/indirect for instance, adding chips is of course very easy

With a grill like this that is very airtight, it seems to keep the moisture content in the meat on slow cooks a lot higher. Holding my hand above the chimney (not recommended on hot cooks btw!) I can feel the moisture coming out of the thing. I have never noticed this on my standard kettles.

The ceramic makes it a lot less susceptible than the standard kettles to changes in weather. On those things I would notice if the sun came out, or if the wind direction changed, and had to adjust accordingly. Because of the huge mass, the Primo seems unaffected. Can’t wait to try it out in real winter conditions next winter!

The low and slow cook I did this weekend was quicker than my experiences with the Weber kettles, even though I had the same grate/dome temperature range as I normally have. I think this could be attributed to several things, but the higher mouisture content inside seems a likely contributor, as well as being able to keep the lid on for a lot longer than I do on the kettles. Running at a range mostly between 130-150 degrees C (265-320F) this weekend, one of the 12 pound pork butts I had was done after only 8 hours.

This stuff burns very steady and long in the Primo!

Another big thing with Primo – it burns really clean. I filled up the chamber with coal for the above cook, and cooked for about 12 hours total, closed the vents – and more than 1/3 of the charcoal (Wicked Good Weekend Warrior type) I put in was still there the next day. That’s pretty impressive. Scraping the ashes out of it there was not a whole lot of those either.

I learned something else too on one of these first cooks. Make sure the two deflector plates make contact in the middle, even a small gap here will burn your food where the gap is!

Lastly, the beef ribs I made on the Primo this weekend came out WAY better than my 7-8 previous attempts at those on standard kettles. More testing will be needed but it seems attributable to the grill that I would nail it on the first try when I have had so many tries before. Don’t get me wrong, they’ve been good before too, but nothing like what came out of this thing in terms of tenderness+juicyness.

All in all, I am very pleased with my newest grill so far. The only downside I see is that it takes a little while to get it up to temp, but I will be working on testing different methods and ways, some of that could be my lack of experience with kamado style grills too.

Full disclosure: I got a good price on this grill+accessories to have it appear on my blog at times in photos etc (which it would’ve without the discount too, to be honest). But then I figured it would be fun to write some about my experiences with it too as I know a lot of people are looking at kamado style cookers these days.

Came up with a new BBQ sauce today. The plan is to use it for beef short ribs, so that’s what I thought about when coming up with the flavour profile for it. It’s slightly sweet, very tangy, and as spicy as you want to make it. I ordered some delicious dried Chipotles from iHerb. They’re kinda hard to come by in Norway. If you can get them locally where you live, consider yourself lucky. Here’s what I did.

First thing you want to do is heat up some oil in a saucepan. Then add finely chopped onions, garlic, fresh chillies, and the chipotle peppers. Let them caramelize on low for about 15 minutes, then add the other dried spices and cook another 5 minutes.

Now you can add the A1, the vinegar, the ketchup, and the sugar. let it simmer until you get the desired thickness, and remember the sugar will make it thicker when it’s cold, so if you plan to primarily serve it cold, you should consider that.

Once it reaches it desired thickness, it is time to blend. The cool thing here is you can take out one or more whole chipotles, blend, taste and see how spicy it is. If it’s not hot enough for you, add inn chipotle(s) and blend again until it’s just right for you. How cool is that!?